Generally, medicines of various kinds and forms may be included in a unit dose of medication according to a prescription for a patient, and the unit dose of medication is put in a basket and delivered to the patient.
The various medicines in one basket are gathered from containers storing each kind of medicine according to the kind and the number of medicines written on the prescription, and the basket in which the medicines are gathered is delivered to the patient, and the patient takes the medicines gathered in the basket.
Meanwhile, conventionally, to gather the various medicines in the one basket, a medicine specialist such as a pharmacist should manually take out each of the medicines from bottles or the like, in which the medicines are stored, according to the prescription for the patient, and then should put the gathered medicines in the basket. Therefore, a confirmation work which checks again accuracy of the gathered medicines is essentially required.
In such an operation, it is difficult to ensure the accuracy of administration of the medicine, and thus there is always possibility of medication accidents. In addition to the medication accidents, since a medicine gathering process itself is very complicated, it takes a long time to gather the medicines according to the prescription for the patient, and thus there is another problem that work efficiency is deteriorated.
Therefore, in gathering the medicines by a unit dose according to the prescription for the patient, a study on methods and techniques which may enhance the accuracy and the efficiency to provide convenience to a user such as the pharmacist and also may prevent the medication accidents in advance is required.
In addition, the medicines are manufactured to contain ingredients for treating a corresponding disease and to have various kinds and dosage forms such as tablets, powders, and injections.
To automatically store and supply the medicines of such various forms and kinds, medicine storing and supplying apparatuses have been developed.
In particular, since the injections in which liquid medicines are stored are manufactured using glass containers, there is a problem that the containers bump against each other during a storage and supply process and thus the injections are damaged.
Therefore, it is necessary to develop a medicine storing and supplying system which may complexly store the medicines of different forms and kinds from each other, such as the injections and the tablets, may supply the accurate medicines to the patient, and may check a storing and supplying state of each medicine in real time.
Meanwhile, if a specific medicine of the medicines is erroneously supplied to other patient, the patient who has taken the wrong medicine may be seriously harmed. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an access right to each medicine and to allow only an administrator having the authorization to store and supply the corresponding medicine.
Further, conventionally, there was no means for confirming whether a medicine receiving container storing the medicine is a genuine one, and thus the medication accidents occurred due to an unjustifiable use of the medicine receiving container.